


Hope, Yet

by lordy_lou



Series: Interim [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Gen, episode 103
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 23:28:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15521070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordy_lou/pseuds/lordy_lou
Summary: Reality returns in a rush, and the stones of the temple are passing cold under her knees, and there’s a tuning fork in her palms.  It carries within it that self-same warmth and comfort she’s felt in Sarenrae’s touch, in the glow of her holy symbol, and she knows:They have a way.





	Hope, Yet

_i recall a time you lost your mind._

_you seemed so small._

 

* * *

 

 

As Pike rushes to Sarenrae’s temple with all of the tall folk, she cannot help but to look back towards the Quadroads, where Grog and Scanlan are gamboling down the stone-paved street to do… something.She’s not quite sure what.Something about a Lord.

To be entirely honest, she has bigger things on her mind, and she’s just glad that Grog has been willing to give Scanlan a second chance.Let the boys go play while she goes to pray, Pike thinks.

Hmm.Not a terrible rhyme, that one.Scanlan might like it.Pike thinks of crying in the dark, of his hands on her hips through her leathers, and focuses on her feet, on where they’re going.

The walk to the temple is fast and quiet: Keyleth and Vex are holding closer to Vax than they normally would, as if they’re afraid that he’ll dissolve into ash again.Percy is bringing up the rear, and the closer they get to the Temple district, the more uncomfortable he looks—Grog would call it constipated, really.Pike recites prayers for comfort under her breath—the oldest ones, the bedtime rituals from when she’d just moved into Wilhand’s house and he’d introduced her to Sarenrae, long since memorized and tripping off her tongue in Gnomish.

Once again, she has bigger things on her mind.Vax is back from the dead on a mission from his god and he will die when that mission is completed.Vecna is 350 miles away, and he is preparing to ascend to godhood.They have gods to talk to, and it all starts with her: she will ask Sarenrae for a way to visit her realm.

It’s a to-do list.

It’s a hell of a to-do list. 

As they near the temple, streams of families are leaving from the entrance after a service, and as the group cuts their way through the happy crowd Pike can’t help but to cast a critical eye over the place:the new windows were holding up well (all blue and red and and gold stained glass, and she loves praying here in the dawn’s light as it catches), but she’d heard a suspicious creak in the hinges as the mass of people moved through.Her acolytes see her, and there are smiles and greetings and—well, it’s Vox Machina, so a bit of confusion before Pike kneels to pray, to beseech, to hope.There’s a soft rustle of leathers and cloth behind her, and she knows her friends have kneeled as well.

She looks at the spire in the center of the temple, at the gleaming ruby set in platinum and gold: she’d left before it had been finished, and there’s a momentary pang of twinned loss and joy at the knowledge that while she’d missed its construction, things had carried on smoothly without her.

In those families’ faces, she had seen joy and love, and she knows this temple is doing well.The Everlight is here, and the Everlight is in her heart, and the Everlight is with the people all around her. 

Despite the situation, she cannot help but to smile.Pike touches her holy symbol—a gift from Wilhand, decades ago—and begins to pray.

(Her prayers are like conversations, and she can hear Vax shuffle and she wonders what Scanlan had prayed for, and she takes her sadness for what could have been and her fear for what is yet to come and lifts them to the spire, to the heavens, to where they’ll always be heard.)

_Please help us.I don’t know what else to say.This is beyond us now._

And, kneeling in the temple she’d built, Pike sees instead a wide, brilliant ocean and pearl-crusted shores, and she hears the thrum of the waves and the heartbeat of Sarenrae’s love throughout this glass-lit realm.Then she sees the Everlight, and she is as beautiful as she has always been and Pike’s heart soars as she hears her goddess’ voice like a great, distant bell:

 

_Then the time is right for us to meet._

_Come._

_Come and join Me on the Island of Renewal, within the Blessed Fields of Elysium._

_Here, we can speak._

 

 

(The warmth of her goddess’ touch is something that lifts her soul, and although Pike does not know it, her friends watch her face crack into a gentle smile.)

 

 

_You have the tools.You have the means._

 

 

(A mote of flame is pressed into her hands, and it does not burn her,)

 

 

_I await._

 

 

and reality returns in a rush, and the stones of the temple are passing cold under her knees, and there’s a tuning fork in her palms.It carries within it that self-same warmth and comfort she’s felt in Sarenrae’s touch, in the glow of her holy symbol, and she knows:

They have a way. 

There is hope yet.

She greets her friends, beaming and bright, and something in Vax’s smile is terribly broken before he swallows it down.He grabs Keyleth’s hand as Vex babbles to her acolytes, as Vox Machina once again prove to be _those_ friends, and Pike watches with wary eyes as Keyleth squeezes Vax’s hand in return. 

Pike closes her eyes once more, before they step outside of the temple, and breathes a blessing for her friends.They’re not believers, not like her, but she knows belief isn’t a pre-requisite for a god’s attention anyways.She hears bells tolling faintly, and she imagines it’s a sound from Sarenrae before she realizes that no, nope, they’re alarm bells ringing throughout Vasselheim.

Percy—already looking far less discomfited now that they’ve left the temple proper—tilts his head at the noise.Vex is is leaning against his side and for a moment Pike has a sudden rush of how they’ve all paired off again, and she hears Scanlan’s snarling voice in her mind. _Vax has Keyleth.Percy has Vex.Pike has Grog.And Scanlan has no-one._

(She isn’t angry now, she thinks.Sometimes, in her crueler moods, she agrees with some of the things he’d said, and then she starts to hate him all the more—that day had been so much, too much, full of hatred and heartbreak and heavy with broken expectations on all sides.)

The bells are ringing, and Percy remarks that it couldn’t have possibly been Scanlan and Grog, not after only half an hour away. _Surely_ they couldn’t get in _that_ much trouble.

“Nope, it was the guards,” says Scanlan somewhere near her left shoulder, and Grog chortles in agreement, from gods only _knew_ where.“Oi, it’s us,” he continues, somewhat unnecessarily—they know each others’ voices by heart now, even with the time apart.There’s no sign of them, but Pike can see a faint few drops of blood collecting at her left side, and Grog’s heavy enough that he leaves tracks in the soil off of the road.Her heartbeat slows from the momentary jump.

“We’re invisible,” Grog adds helpfully.Vex swings an arm, muttering Scanlan’s name—well, not really, but the familiarity and ease with which she says _you little shit_ it’s basically a name—and instead apparently hits some part of Grog that has him thanking her.Pike cannot help but to laugh, and there’s stifled chuckle beside her as Scanlan belatedly informs Vex he’s over here.He does not define where “here” is, of course. 

As Scanlan and Grog talk more—apparently Grog has punched a captain of the guard, and the both scared many innocent people—there is a faint _plip_ as another drop of blood falls onto the soil nearby, and the tall folk shift the conversation to debate further plans and Pike subtly reaches her left hand out to her side, open and empty.

She will not put into words what she hopes for.She holds the warmth of Sarenrae in her heart and in her hands, and she knows they’ll leave for Elysium soon.The image of waves upon a pearled beach burns the backs of her eyes, and she _will_ see it true. 

There is a soft movement next to her, and warm fingers curl into hers.Pike closes her eyes and feels the twitch of Scanlan’s hand in her own, and as she shifts her hand to entwine her fingers more fully with his, she casts a healing touch all tingly-warm through their touching palms.

He squeezes her hand—once, twice.A _thank you_ in his own little muted language, she supposes, because he’d always had trouble saying the important things. 

She wonders, once again, what he’d prayed for in his long-gone year.His hand in hers is old and comfortable from the quick dimensional bends, from the same sort of healing spells, from pulling her back from a river’s edge so long ago in the Gilded Run.

There is something in the language of hands, she thinks.She does not know that she has ever held Scanlan’s hand for the sole comfort of it—there’s always been some necessity—but his grip is strong and familiar. 

Experimentally, Pike squeezes his hand back, and there’s a faint, fast inhale to her left.A wicked grin kicks it way across her face because there’s something so _gratifying_ to know that she’s capable of having that same effect on him as he does on her.

Above her, the talking stops— a decision made, to Pyrah for warning and then to Elysium—and Pike slowly uncurls her fingers from Scanlan’s, and her heart lurches unexpectedly at the loss of touch.

Keyleth brings forth a portal from a nearby tree.It is strong and stout; it’d grown strong here before the temple had been uncovered. 

Pike takes a moment to think of things abandoned. 

But: to Pyrah, then to Sarenrae, to those gleaming beaches and that heartbeat-flame, to redemption and hope and that calm, warm love.

As they rush into the trunk as a group, she blindly throws her hand back towards him, thoughts limned with that same unspeakable hope.She clutches Sarenrae’s symbol to her chest with her other hand.In the liminal space between the wilderness, in the quiet rush of breaths and sprinting boots—of all of her friends and loves, of her family and her future—his fingers catch hers, stilling something within her soul that she can’t name yet, but knows she will.

She holds on tight. The warmth in her chest bubbles over and she laughs between breaths, and Scanlan joins in, shocked and sharp and free. 

Together, they run into the light.

 

* * *

 

 

_that was years ago._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> italicized dialogue is directly from the episode. hopefully the formatting for sarenrae's speech isn't too off-putting.
> 
> interim text from "a memory of you" by matthew and the atlas. 
> 
> reviews/kudos are appreciated!


End file.
